


you're in my blood (like holy wine)

by nightbloods



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, canon compliant to 4.09, lots and lots of metaphors, rated for language and non-explicit sex, spoilers for 4a
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 19:27:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5714323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloods/pseuds/nightbloods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>his bruises surface like blue and purple florals over his skin after days spent under a hood, and her mouth lingers while they blossom watercolor under her lips. she cradles his chest to hers as his ribs mend under her hands. she takes her hand in his and massages the fire out of his knuckles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're in my blood (like holy wine)

**Author's Note:**

> so, okay. if you don't like a bunch of metaphors, leave now. i had a lot of fun with this if only because i didn't pull back with any of that. there is no real structure, but the timeline spans throughout 4a with a little spec for what's to come. i've been told there is a theme that managed to carry. title from joni mitchell's "a case of you"
> 
> disclaimer: i researched the actual recovery process that felicity might have to deal with and it was too bleak for me so i opted to bullshit the whole injury recovery.

the decision to move in together was never anything they discussed. they learned how to live under the same roof months ago when ivytown made the quiet shift from one week stay to something a little more permanent, a little more stable. oliver learned that felicity has a side of the bed. felicity learned that oliver has a prowess in the kitchen that takes her aback more than anything she’s ever seen him do.    
  
(well,  _ almost _ anything.)   
  
she shares her wine, and does not share her books. he wants her to taste everything he cooks, and constantly steals her pillow. felicity learns to navigate a farmer’s market and oliver learns to sleep through the night.    
  
back in star city, oliver takes her to the loft and there is no question that they will stay there together. felicity drops her bag on the couch and her suitcase on the bed, rolls the word  _ home _ around on her tongue until oliver’s mouth slants over hers and she feels it behind his teeth.    
  
the loft becomes their solace, never a secret but hidden away nonetheless. it comes with its own set of bad memories (oliver and felicity bring a few of their own, too) but if there is anything that their lives depend on, it is the ability to take back what would normally be deemed lost. they clean the bloodstains, sweep up the broken glass, call a man about the windows.    
  
oliver follows her up the stairs to the bedroom and they grapple with what life has handed them.    
  
his bruises surface like blue and purple florals over his skin after days spent under a hood, and her mouth lingers while they blossom watercolor under her lips. she cradles his chest to hers as his ribs mend under her hands. she takes her hand in his and massages the fire out of his knuckles.    
  
the doubts and tension that appear after days protecting his city in daylight are taken in her hands and cradled until placid. she kisses the furrow from his brow and coaxes the worry out of his muscles.    
  
“no shop talk in the bed,” he tells her once, in the middle of a full on ramble about the program she implemented into their search system at the foundry.    
  
felicity laughs, a soft thing that flutters in her ribcage. “does this rule apply to leather in the bed, too?”   
  
  


* * *

 

  
  


when felicity was a kid, her mother would send her to sunday school every week. _ you're better off there than at the casino with me, _ she’d say. felicity would pull her nose out of a book and march to the all-in-one chapel down the street, halfheartedly listen to an old woman spill parables over a plastic table.     
  
twenty something years later, pressed between her boyfriend and the couch cushions, she remembers the first step to religion.  _ confess it with your mouth _ , she thinks as she drags her lips across his neck. oliver lets out a moan, easy and free; felicity thinks of alters and blood wine and candles flickering atop a menorah.    
  
he undresses her with nail scarred hands, sends her heartbeat rising in her chest like lazarus in his tomb, litters the curve of her hips with judas’ kisses; ten silver pieces hidden along her spine. she is not a little girl anymore, doesn't much believe in saviors or white horses. but oliver slides his fingers across sensitive skin and she understands why there are so many churches in the world. 

  
the things he whispers into her collarbones would make lucifer himself blush.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


  
  


the first time it truly dawns on her, she’s having trouble sleeping. maybe because it was a slow day and she's gotten back into the habit of collapsing into bed, maybe because she isn't quite accustomed to sleeping in the loft yet. oliver rolls over, catches her by the hip and pulls her against him. it's like her body was waiting for its cue, her eyes are fluttering closed as soon as she's settled into the curve of him. 

 

it hits her like a trainwreck; sudden and blinding and she swears somewhere she can hear people screaming. 

 

felicity tumbles out of bed on autopilot, body and mind busy remembering how quiet a place becomes when it's missing someone, how hard it is to relearn how to sleep alone. she's full of words like attachment and love and dependency; every single one of them scribbled over to read like fear. 

 

(she's like a dog with abandonment issues, never able to forget all the times its owner left; all shook up every time she hears the door close.)

 

when she was eight, felicity remembers waking up to find the entire contents of the pantry strewn across the kitchen floor, her mother hacking away at ice in the freezer with a butterknife. donna was still in her waitressing uniform from the night before, makeup smeared everywhere. 

 

felicity hadn't needed to ask the reason for the impromptu spring cleaning, but she did anyway. 

 

“he's gone, baby,” donna said, and felicity was small and naive but somehow she’d known her father wasn't coming back. 

 

over the years, a pattern formed. after a breakup or losing a job, donna would set about cleaning the apartment late at night. felicity woke up to the smell of clorox and a teary-eyed mom armed with a mop and tired eyes. 

 

_ every girl grows up to be her mother _ , felicity thinks as she scrubs the oven. 

 

oliver finds her on the balcony an hour or so later, clearing her head of the cleaning chemicals and tired nostalgia. the click of the door rattles her from a blank daze, bordering the edge of being too tired to keep her eyes open anymore. 

 

“what are you doing out here?” he asks, concern overriding the sleep in his voice. 

 

she offers a small smile and thinks that sometimes bravery means letting the curtain fall; lock away the snarl and the running shoes, part your hair and bare your neck and hope the bite is quick. 

 

“clearing my head,” she answers quietly. her hands smell like oven cleaner but she's too exhausted to think herself in circles anymore. this will all come back around eventually but for now she lets oliver pull her into his chest. he wraps a blanket around her bare shoulders and she could spend an eternity and a half in the crook of his shoulders. 

 

(that's the terrifying part.)

 

she waits, but the bite never comes. there is a hum instead of a growl and careful fingers instead of claws, only warm, welcoming lips where there should be teeth. 

  
  


* * *

 

  
  


there are days that they don't set foot in their apartment until the sun is coming up again. they order pizza at dawn and consider eating it in the shower. they end up in the bath instead, crumbs all over the bathroom floor. oliver thumbs patterns into her waist, traces his palms around the overworked muscles like she's the one with a new collection of bruises. 

 

her fingertips skim over the scars on his body and he feels like war; her mouth cuts a path across the landmarks and there is no smoke or blood clinging to his bones. he only tastes like skin, like sweat and leather and oliver.    
  
this body is not a machine, it is as much animal as it is man. teeth bared to the world, pink underbelly bared to her teeth.    
  
his body is simply that: his body. it is battle-torn and wears the destruction is has seen like a brand, but it is warm and solid and there are far more remarkable things about it than the scars.    
  
(like his hands; calloused and rough and gentle and nimble. like the hinge of his jaw; the pulse point behind it that is alive. like his hips; the spot in the hollow of them that sends him unraveling at her touch. like his mouth, his goddamned mouth; the way it forms her name like something holy, the things it can do when pressed to her skin.)   
  


 

* * *

 

  
  


after the accident with the limo and the bullets and all that mess, felicity is homebound for a while. which means that by default, oliver is too. they spend days in bed, wrapped around each other and coming to terms with what happened. oliver answers the same questions a dozen times over as the morphine is weaned away and felicity’s mind grapples with coming so close to death. it's a bizarre feeling, waking up somewhere foreign and being told your heart had to be reminded of how to keep beating. 

 

oliver steps into the role of caretaker with ease that shouldn't surprise her anymore. he cooks and cleans and fawns over her like something out of a sepia-toned sitcom. when he has to leave, he fusses over her until she shoos him out the door. 

 

it's incredibly domestic, how she’ll hobble into the kitchen with stitches in her abdomen to find him hovering over the stove or taking down the christmas tree. it isn't news to either of them that he wears it well. 

 

once the stitches are out and the meds become less necessary, they both go back to work. felicity reads over expense reports and handles conference calls on skype from her couch. oliver comes home at night, sits beside her and folds the laundry. the ring on her left hand catches the light and it feels like a bizarre pipe dream. it feels like sharing a mailbox and a bed and secrets. there is an awful reality show playing on the tv and oliver leans a little to catch her wrist, her sweatshirt and his dress pants strewn across his lap. she watches his eyes fixate on the ring he grew up seeing on another woman’s hand. 

 

“when you woke up in the hospital, you told me we should get a dog.” he says, something akin to amusement all over his face. 

 

“to complete the picture,” felicity finishes the thought after a beat, ears turning red as she remembers. her mom had laughed, oliver had too. something about the idea of raising a living thing with him, something with a  heartbeat and a capacity for affection. the idea had seemed appealing to her morphine-addled mind. 

 

maybe it's the last of the painkillers hanging on, but it doesn't sound so bad to her now either. 

 

she suggests a cat, or another fern, maybe a fish. he laughs something free and unburdened by worry. 

 

* * *

  
  
  
the walking wound in felicity’s abdomen shines a dull pink, faded from the angry red that the bullets left behind several weeks ago. their bed has felt like a prison to her for a while now, this is the first time she has felt free in it since coming home from the hospital.    
  
they kept a countdown on the fridge. it feels disgustingly domestic (and just a little endearing) when oliver shows it to her the day after one of her checkup appointments.    
  
“37 days until what?” felicity had asked, her confusion played up by the pain meds turning somersaults through her blood.    
  
“until your doctor gives you the all-clear for any  _ strenuous activities _ ,” oliver wiggled his eyebrows, schoolboy grin plastered on his face that made felicity giggle.    
  
(which then made her wince and flutter a hand out to cover her stitches. she hated how the worry in his eyes kept resurfacing like that.)   
  
oliver is all gentle hands, soft mouth. he cradles her like she is something breakable, and felicity forgives him for it because he knows that she is not a window or a glass ornament. he presses his palm to the strawberry marks until she hisses out a harsh breath, chest constricting like it only does when the body is alive.    
  


his atlas girl; home to every place he’s ever wanted to be, veins laid out like a maze of roadmaps to everywhere he is headed (away from the bite of everywhere he has been). her clothes are tossed away like peeling back pages and his fingers trace across her landscape. he pours over her mountain range ribcage like a lost man seeking shelter, trails a hurricane path to the earthquake pulse point in her neck. felicity rolls her hips into his and they both shiver as the lightening flashes. 

 

her body is not a point on a map and it is not his to claim, but it is the only place he wants to be. 

 

her landmarks fit to his like a mold, like cards falling into place or stars lining up or any number of overused metaphors for the way that being with him feels easy and simple and solid. fear is etched into her bones in braille; experience has taught her to keep her shoes on for when the glass breaks, spare parts on standby so that she can put herself back together when she's left alone. years of lessons still linger, but felicity has learned to wear bravery as a second skin. the color of it suits her.    
  
she bolsters underneath him, powderkeg mouth over hard-won scars, and she's not sure who is the flame and who is the gunpowder at this point: it's all familiar wildfire. she rocks her hips along with oliver’s until her skin pulls at the phantom stitches. it's a slow build, more smoke than flame. oliver breathes mangled words into her hair and she comes undone like a fall from grace, one hand on his jaw, one hand on her bulletwound.    
  


maybe shattering isn't such an awful thing. 

**Author's Note:**

> i would love to know what you thought :)


End file.
